“What seest thou now, lad?” asked Murdo.
“The man with the halt,” answered the lad.
“Then your time has come, child. The stroke worth the fifty head, and pith on your arm!”
Rory left the old man's side, and went down through a patch of shelisters, his mouth dry as a peat and his heart leaping. He was across the wrack and below the pools before the coming man had noticed him. But the coming man thought nothing wrong, and if he did, it was but one man at any rate, and one man could use but one sword, if swords were going. Rory stepped on the edge of the sand, and tagged the bonnet down on his brow, while the man limped on between him and the sea. Then he stepped out briskly and said, “Stop, pig!” He said it strangely soft, and with, as it were, no heart in the business; for though the lame man was strong, deepbreasted, supple, and all sound above the belt, there was a look about him that made the young fellow have little keenness for the work.
“Pig?” said the Diarmaid, putting back his shoulders and looking under his heavy brows. “You are the Lochow lad who has been seeking for me?”
“Ho, ho! red fellow; ye kent of it, then?”
“Red fellow! It's red enough you are yourself, I'm thinking. I have no great heed to draw steel on a lad of your colour, so I'll just go my way.” And the man looked with queer wistful eyes over his shoulder at the lad, who, with blade-point on the sand, would have let him pass.
But up-by at the house the taibhsear watched the meeting. The quiet turn it took was beyond his reading, for he had thought it would be but the rush, and the fast fall-to, and no waste of time, for the tide was coming in.
“White love, give him it!” he cried out, making for the shore. “He looks lame, but the pig's worth a man's first fencing.”
Up went the boy's steel against the grey cloud, and he was at the throat of the Diarmaid like a beast. “Malison on your black heart, murderer!” he roared, still gripping his broadsword. The Diarmaid flung him off like a child, and put up his guard against the whisking of his blade.